Living Wittily

Jurgen Moltmann - overcoming death and a theology of hope

Moltmann at his rhetoriocal best:

So we may say that jesus' death on the cross was solitary, and exclusively his death, but his raising from the dead is inclusive, open to the world, and embraces the universe, an event not merely human and historical but cosmic too: the beginning of the new creation of all things.

With the overcoming of the disciples' crucified hope for the future and the shaken confidence in death of the women at the tomb, the early Christian belief in the resurrection acted in the ancient world like an explosion og hearts and sense. It attacked with elemental force 'the powers iof this world': the power of sin, the inescapability of death, and the hopelessness of hell. The risen Christ became the power of protest against these godless and inhumane forces.

Jurgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness Arise! (London: SCM, 2010) page 55

Question: Why does this 254 page paperback book cost £25 from SCM, and the soon to be published Divine Humanity by David Brown (on Kenosis) costs £50 paperback for 256 pages. Do the tow ectra pages cost £12.50 each??? I am emailing SCM about this :(

Kenosis, the Love of God, and a Way of Seeing the World Unselfishly.

Much of my study time just now is spent preparing a keynote theological address for a gathering of ministers. I've long been persuaded that kenosis is an essential theological category for understanding the nature of Divine love. If God is revealed in Jesus, and God's love is Christ-like, then kenosis far from being a marginal sidelight, is the shining centre of the love of God incarnate in human life, crucified for a broken world, and resurrected in a power that remakes creation. The Colossian Christ of chapter 1 is the same Kenotic Christ of Philippians 2 and the same exalted Christ of Revelation 5,the lamb slain in the midst of the throne. The title is " 'This is love's prerogative, to give, and give, and give.' Trinitarian Kenosis as a Model of Ministry."

I fully recognise kenosis is a contested idea, especially if it is made the primary interpretive category in Christology. But whether such primacy is claimed or not, kenosis seems to me indispensable as a way of exploring what we mean when we talk of the love of God. I am interested that there is now considerable research activity around the theme - Bruce McCormack, David Brown and Paul Fiddes in systematic theology, Michael Gorman and M S Park in New Testament, Paul Fiddes and Timothy Herbert in pastoral theology. (By the way, David Brown's volume due out in a month or two is an SCM paperback - priced £50 - from this we conclude that kenosis is expensive, or at least to buy this book you need a kenotic (self-emptying) credit card!!!)

My own encounter with kenotic theology at its most persuasive is in the seminal work of W H Vanstone, Love's endeavor, Love's Expense - in 1977 I paid £2.95 (please note SCM) for this slim book that is worth its weight in platinum. I've given it as a gift almost enough times to buy David Brown's SCM volume. It has shaped and inspired and energised and quality tested my ministry from the start. I don't read it uncritically, but its central thesis about the nature of love as precarious, with no guaranteed outcomes, instinctively investing itself in the good of the other, as that in God which seeks the response of relational love, seems to me to be congruent with a Gospel of love as self-giving, conciliatory and transformative.

What I'm trying to do is explore kenosis as that in the love of God that is evident in the intra-trinitarian life of God. Moltmann of course is a major influence here - but so is Michael Gorman more recently, where kenosis is linked to the cruciform shape of divine love. But there are other thinkers - and just as important there are stories of human loving and caring that are themselves primary evidence that far from being a demanding passion ever tempted to selfishness, love is defined more by indefatigable goodwill, persistent kindness, self-expending energy for the other, self-donating in emotional gift, self-emptying not as a habit of self-negation, but as a pouring out of ourselves into the lives and blessing of others. In that sense kenosis isn't a contested theological concept - but an ideal of ministry in which the basin and the towel, the table and the cup, the open arms and outstretched hands of welcome, express that finest of book titles, Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense.

Good News for Babylon - Brueggemann as Old Testament Prophet

Two new books coming by Walter Brueggemann. I've been reading this Old Testament prophet for 30 years, and he is as stimulating, infuriating, rewarding and necessary as ever for those called to preach beyond the horizons of their own vision, and who therefore want their Old Testament theology "thickly textured". The phrase is Brueggemann's, and refers to the complexity of both the text and the lived experience of those of us who come to the Old Testament world millenia later, to discern and live towards the vision of God and the worldd that lies at the heart of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament gospel.

Out of Babylon (coming in November from Abingdon - see here) is the kind of book the church, emergent or submergent, now needs to read, consider and then do the hard work of asking what is the good news for Babylon today. Here's the publisher's description of what Brueggemann is about:

It was the center of learning, commerce, wealth, and religion. Devoted to materialism, extravagance, luxury, and the pursuit of sensual pleasure, it was a privileged society. But, there was also injustice, poverty, and oppression. It was the great and ancient Babylon—the center of the universe. And now we find Babylon redux today in Western society. Consumer capitalism, a never-ending cycle of working and buying, a sea of choices produced with little regard to life or resources, societal violence, marginalized and excluded people, a world headed toward climactic calamity. Where are the prophets—the Jeremiahs—to lead the way out of the gated communities of overindulgence, the high rises of environmental disaster, and the darkness at the core of an apostate consumer society? 

It costs money to read Brueggemann! His production rate means at least a couple of volumes a year. Much of his work is gathered essays, addresses and other occasional papers. But there are very few repetitions, and I've never read a Brueggemann chapter, commentary or essay without being as stated above, stimulated, infuriated or rewarded! So Disruptive Grace, a major collection of his recent pieces due in January from Fortress will be a straightforward click on the pre-order button. Here's the blurb

Walter Brueggemann has been one of the leading voices in Hebrew Bible interpretation for decades; his landmark works in Old Testament theology have inspired and informed a generation of students, scholars, and preachers. These chapters gather his recent addresses and essays, never published before, drawn from all three parts of the Hebrew Bible—Torah, prophets, and writings—and addressing the role of the Hebrew canon in the life of the church.

Brueggemann turns his critical erudition to those practices—prophecy, lament, prayer, faithful imagination, and a holy economics—that alone may usher in a humane and peaceful future for our cities and our world, in defiance of the most ruthless aspects of capitalism, the arrogance of militarism, and the disciplines of the national security state.

"Holy economics" seems like a recent theme triggered by recent events in global markets. Not so. The first two books of Brueggemann I read were The Land, and Living toward a Vision. They are both over 30 years old. Both are to do with just practices, critique of status quo, analysis of power - its use and abuse, and a searching exegesis of texts that call in question the prejudiced fundamentalism of consumer capitalism and the imperial pretensions of economy, business and global ambition. Reading Brueggemann is a cultural and moral interrogation of the way things are in the world, and the interrogator's questions are formulated in conversation with that most disruptive of texts - the Bible. 

Sports Injuries and Victoria Plums

It's been a week of limping progress. Literally. Should a man my age be playing five-a-side football? The unanimous view of those who know me well enough to be unflinchingly frank is a scornful negative. Feel free to offer your own compassionate, caring and courteously concerned opinion. Last Friday I discovered I have a gastrocnemius - that's the long muscle in the calf that deals with stopping and acceleration. I stopped, accelerated and then 'ping', had to stop! been slow and sore ever since!

The positive and friendly doctor I saw the following day told me I was very fit for my age. That the injury was an impact injury. Could happen to anyone. Even David Beckham. This final consolatory comparison was mentioned to Stuart, who now refers to my wife's middle name as Posh! Personally, I think the comparison with Beckham bears some credibility - after all we both had to put ice packs on our leg....but in fairness, I struggle to find a more compelling comparison, because I ain't rich!!

However it is on the mend, slowly and will need regular stretching exercises for a while. Meanwhile my leg is technicolour, purple, red and yellow hues, impressive as an impressionist landscape in various blurred hues.

Not to worry. yesterday I ate my first punnet of Victoria Plums. And I easily walked the length of the high street to buy them - and as they make such a brief appearance on the shelves, I bought some for other devotees of this most wonderful autumn food. There is an entirely neglected sacrament of friendship in buying your favourite food and sharing it with others. The trick is to buy enough to indulge yourself as well. Actually, on further consideration, the purple red and yellow of the plum is vaguely familiar to the purple red and yellow hues of.......see above :)

Storm clouds that darken our discussion of God....

Here's an interesting piece of theological reflection:

There is a storm cloud that darkens our discussion of God and language, and it is expressed by the formula...the finite is not capable of the infinite. The worry is that mere human words can neither contain nor convey the thought of God. It is best to respond to this concern not speculatively but historically. By nature, the finite is indeed incapable of receiving the infinite. The incarnation is conclusive evidence that, by grace, the finite is made capable of receiving the infinite. Better: God is capable of "receiving" (assuming) human nature. (Deus capax humanitas).

The incarnation thus serves as a check on our tendency to play divine transcendence off against human language. Furthermore, if the incarnate Son of God can speak our words, it follows that we have at least one instance of literal divine speech: When Jesus opens his mouth and speaks Scripture...barth's distinction evaporates." These words do not become but are the word of God. The line between divine and discourse is breached: the infinite intones.

Kevin Vanhoozer, "Triune Discourse II", in Trinitarian Theology for the Church. Scripture, Community, Worship. (Nottingham: Apollos, 2009), 54

Michaelangelo Pieta, and the prayer that is best unspoken

 

 

 

 

I didn't know this poem by C Day Lewis until I read it today. The combination of this exquisitely worked Pieta and the poignant first person poem I find breathtaking. To read the poem aloud, while looking at this image is to pray in language that takes us beyond mere words to a sense of the unspeakbale sadness at the heart of the Gospel of good news. Atonement is not a theory to argy bargy about - not argument, adoration is the disposition of the true theologian.

Pieta

A dome superb as heaven's vault, capping a story

whose hero blessed the meek; a desert of floor

Refracting faith like a mirage; the orchestration

Of gold and marble engulfing the still, small voice:

You cannot pass over St Peter's and what it stands for,

Whether you see it as God's vicarious throne

Or the biggest bubble yet unpricked....

I was lost, ill at ease here, until by chance

In a side chapel we found a woman mourning

Her son: all the lacrimae rerum flowed

To her gesture of grief, all life's blood from his stone.

There is no gap or discord between the divine

And the human in that pieta of Michaelangelo.

...........................

 

The necessity for preachers to undergo the world...

In her Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton writes of a moment while tending her garden border, and she was overcome by tiredness, and particularly a sense that too much had happened without enough time to process it. She later wrote of the fatigue caused "by unassimilated experience." My parents used to have a wee devotional book, given them at their wedding by the minister, but long disappeared - it was called Come Ye Apart. The title came from an old translation of Jesus' invitation to the disciples at the end of a draining day, "Come ye apart and rest awhile". A good title for a book about restoring the soul - also a good phrase to describe what happens in an overstressed life "come ye apart"! -  or as Yeats said, "things come apart, the centre cannot hold".

The poet Denise Leveretov - for me one of a personal canon of poets who assimlate experience and cherish human existence in a troubled world - Levertov writing about her friend Robert Duncan quoted his criticism of a fellow poet - "he has enthusiasms but not passions, he collects experiences but he does not undergo the world". I sometimes think that about preaching today - "enthusiasms but not passions", the preacher collects experiences but does not undergo the world."

When we've done the training, read the books about new hermeneutics, had fun with the homiletical plots and narrative theology, made the necessary concessions and expressed the expected cautions about postmodern suspicions of authority and engaged in discourse analysis and the dangers of social construction through linguistic power games, and then preach; or when we've done the biblical thing and subjected the text to atomised exposition, contextual application, faithfully (so far as our own limited grasp of it goes) proclaimed the gospel to our own satisfaction and even the satisfaction of those privileged to hear us. Well when all that kind of stuff is done and said, the poet poses a fundamental question to the heart of the preacher -

Do you have enthusiasms but not passions?

Do you collect experience but refuse to undergo the world?

To undergo the world is to live deeply, to feel the joy and anguish of other human beings, to come to terms with ambiguity and doubt and struggle and hurt as people try to make ends meet in the economy of the heart. What I sense in much preaching now is a lack of depth, by which I mean a willed unfamiliarity with the deep places of human experience, a superficial stone-skimming-the-surface impatience with profundity or difficult thought, a salesman-like confidence that is entirely uncritical of applied practical answers to life's most troubling complexities, and these delivered in sound-bytes and bullet points as if the conversation was about the latest three for two offers from our preferred supermarket. OK that's exaggeration - but the poet is right. It's too easy in the image saturated environment we inhabit to become collectors of experience and refuse to undergo the world. A preacher is the last person who should shirk depth - maybe those who shirk depth are afraid of sharks.

To undergo the world is a deeply Christ-like journey.

The Word became flesh and made his home amongst us" - the Word did not refuse to undergo the world.

"He emptied himelf....and being born in human likeness...he humbled himself..." the one in the very nature of God, did not refuse to undergo the world.

To undergo the world is to love it, to live in it, to be in the world as a reconciling presence, to hold the world in the heart, to explore the depths and darkness as well as the surface and light of human experience, to struggle with thought in the face of tragedy and to find words to express the joyful mystery of existence, and to do so in order to know when we are short-changing those to whom we dare preach. To undergo the world is to live with openness of mind, ears, eyes and heart - not a collector of experiences, but an experienced human being who in undergoing the world, transfigures experience into wisdom. It is that wisdom that best informs our preaching, and that wisdom which emerges from the encounter between our personal lived experience, the biblical text, and the real lives of those to whom we are privileged to preach.

Once upon a time, in the days before Xscape, Xbox and WiiFii.....

The painting is by W H Y Titcomb and is called The Sunday School Treat. It shows children defying all the health and safety rules as they embark from a Cornish harbour. This image is from the back cover of David Tovey's biography, available from Amazon. Another of Titcomb's better known paintings is The Primitive Methodists at Prayer, (below) another of those closely observed historical snapshots of another era, another culture, now gone.

Making room, books, shelving and an understanding friend.

Had an interesting conversation with a friend who is a joiner. Well, a ship's carpenter which means he is an elite joiner who can turn his hand to other skills as well. The problem is still fitting a library into a smaller size study without major deletions from my catalogue. So the large clothes cupboard in this modest room, given a ship's carpenter's skills, will provide another 23 feet of shelving and some filing space. The Tardis principle. Or maybe a jig saw puzzle - all the pieces only fit together one way?

While discussing the problem I mentioned a number of suggestions made by well meaning friends, that I should just downsize my library, get rid of surplus, expel the excess. Didn't mention Stuart's much more convenient suggestion to give them to him :)) Anyway, said my friend, I paraphrase, but accurately, - "I have a tool kit, and several planes, saws, chisels, hammers, and need a wee trailer to carry them to go and do a job. Your library is a tool kit - you'll get rid of something and then you'll need it. A library isn't just books - it's a lifelong collection of the things you do your work with." I love a man who understands. I showed him my prized Cambridge hardback edition of the George Herbert's poems and explained the extended mortgage needed to buy it. It's inconceivable I'd part with it. It and the vast majority of my books are not bought on impulse - they are chosen companions, resident scholars of choice, conversation partners, gifts of thought and ideas that have made me who I am. Sure some of them can go.

But I have an annual review of my whole library anyway, have done every year for decades, and a box or two go away each year to new homes. So we spent time conspiring against the limitations of space, doing the math, planning and measuring so as to have adequate shelving without the study being overwhelmingly stuffed - I also like wall space for my pictures, and a sense of beauty as well as utility. 

Two Bishops, Western Culture, Islam and Conversation as Mission

Yesterday's post about witness as a term preferred to mission, came back to haunt me when I was skimming through a couple of books on, well, mission! The late Lesslie Newbigin was a pioneer of thinking about mission, and his generous humility combined with lucid criticism make several of his books classic statements of Christian critique of culture, the world and the church. Best known for The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, which remains a classic text, I value just as much his less technical but persuasive The Open Secret. That's the book I was browsing in when I came across this paragraph:

The Christian confession of Jesus as Lord does not involve any attempt to deny the reality of the work of god in the lives and thoughts and prayers of men and women outside the Christian church. On the contrary, it ought to involve an eager expectation of, a looking for, and a rejoicing in the evidence of that work. There is something deeply wrong when Christians imagine that loyalty to Jesus requires them to belittle the manifest presence of the light in the lives of men and women who do not acknowledge him, to seek out points of weakness, to ferret out hidden sins and deceptions as a means of commending the gospel. If we love the light and walk in the light we will also rejoice in the light wherever we find it - even the smallest gleams of it in the surrounding darkness. (page 198 )

Along with Bishop Kenneth Cragg, Newbigin exemplifies that intellectual generosity, spiritual humility, and self-critical honesty which commends the gospel without imperialism, makes Jesus the benchmark of our social interactions, and looks on the world of human affairs as the sphere where goodness is to be found and attended to. I still remember my naive and prejudiced inner world being remade by reading Kenneth Cragg's The Call of the Minaret. I still don't know a more sympathetic portrayal of the conversation that is possible between Christianity and Islam. Without shirking the points of difference, Cragg appreciates, affirms, and while acknowledging areas of ignorance, offers an exposition and critique whose undertone is friendship and whose aim is dialogue. Cragg and Newbigin - Bishops both, and apostles too even if with a small 'a'.